I've written this many times before, but working in some industry will usually expose you to the various problems that need to be solved. Most of the startup founds I've met have either worked in tech, or as consultants, and have noticed some problem that has been sitting unsolved / products that suck / untapped markets. And it is not like you need to be a FAANG SWE or McKinsey consultant enjoy to that privilege.

Every time I've joined a new company, or been exposed to a new sector, I've almost immediately found some startup potential just sitting around. The more boring and entrenched the sector is, the more you find.

As a consumer, you are rarely exposed to the B2B world, or the inner workings of things. You are almost certainty limited to seeing things through consumer eyes, and thus it is easy to focus too much on the very saturated products / services.

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physicsguy 7 days ago | parent | next [-]

I think the biggest difference though is that launching a B2B business is much harder to start with than a B2C one.

If you're a B2C one, you launch an app/website, you get small but basically instant feedback by signups/usage. Reward is potentially low per user however.

With B2B, even if you get in conversation with customers quickly, you still might be talking about a 6-12 months cycle to even get them signed up to a free trial. For large companies they want SSO, RBAC, etc. out of the door, plus RFC on security questionaires, data governance, ISO27001, etc. etc. etc.

	▲	morkalork 7 days ago \| parent \| next [-]
		The successful pattern I've seen is someone around VP level in an existing industry leaving their current company and grabbing some engineers to build their idea. Maybe because their idea is great, or maybe because they're stuck at that level and can't advance further without leaving. But either way, they generally have some contact with their peers at other companies in industry so when they go pitch their product, they're much more likely to succeed than any random asshole off the street.
	▲	7 days ago \| parent \| prev [-]
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FuriouslyAdrift 7 days ago | parent | prev [-]

Working for small to medium size companies, I have noticed there are many 'solved' problems where the solutions are either too complex or, more commonly, too expensive.

There are a lot of old boring things out there that are ripe for disruption.